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Ginger, or Pop Beer

A fermented ginger drink made with ginger, cream of tartar, brown sugar, lemons, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger, or Pop Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger beer

  1. In a large container, combine the ginger, cream of tartar, brown sugar, and sliced lemons.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the yeast and mix well.

  4. Cover and let it ferment for 24 hours.

Bottle and age

  1. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

  2. Allow the bottles to sit for two weeks before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the drink's fizz.
Brown sugar
Provides the food for the yeast and the drink's sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the brew tart.
Jamaica ginger
Supplies the main spicy aroma and flavor of the drink.

The step that matters

Bottle and age for two weeks. Yeast keeps fermenting in sealed bottles, building carbonation. Too little time leaves the drink flat, while sealed bottles can build dangerous pressure if the fermentation runs long.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, cream, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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